Tag: oppression

A slew of propaganda today from China’s state-run press attempts to hide the delays in its manned lunar program

10:27 am

The Tiangong-3 station, as presently configured
The Tiangong-3 station, as presently configured

Generally China’s state-run news agency Xinhua posts no more than one to two short space-related articles per day, with most confined to simply announcing the launch of a rocket.

Today however that state-run agency posted a dozen short articles, linked it appeared to the two press conferences held in connection with tomorrow’s launch of a new crew to China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

The list above is not complete, leaving out a few other short propaganda pieces. Some of these stories — such as those directly related to that new crew launch tomorrow — could have easily been folded into one report. They were not, however, in order to create a large number of separate reports, which in turn hides the fact that there is only one news outlet reporting anything from those two press conferences.

Out of this plethora of stories, two news items stand out however. One, China has now agreed to fly a Pakistani to Tiangong-3. Negotiations for that mission began in 2018. Training has now finally begun. China is also moving forward on flying astronauts from Hong Kong and Macao, two places formally run by western powers that China now controls, quite oppressively. Like the Soviet Union, it is using its space program for propaganda stunts to distract those regions from its iron rule.

Second and more important, Chinese officials claim their program to do a manned lunar landing is still on schedule for a 2030 launch.
» Read more

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The base of the Democratic Party has truly become nightmare to behold

12:25 pm

They aren't just mindless, they are driven by hate
They aren’t just mindless, they are driven by hate

I always say it is the audience that counts. No matter what idiocy the leaders on both sides of the political spectrum might propose, the real future is determined by what their base wants.

It is now very clear that the base of the Democratic Party is driven entirely by hate, envy, and a lust for power, based on an ignorance of history that is appalling. And my saying this not simply an opinion. It is founded on what that base itself has said repeatedly in the past year. First that base has increasingly thrown its support behind Hamas and its anti-Semitic hate of Israel and Jews. Next, it mourned the failed assassination attempts against Donald Trump, then celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, a man whose primary goal was to foster free debate.

In this election season now that base is supporting a candidate in Maine, Graham Platner, who got a Nazi tattoo placed on his chest, and has made numerous hateful posts online over the years against anyone who disagreed with him.
In Virginia that base is excited to support a candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, who enthusiastically called for the murder of his political opponents as well as the death of their kids.

And finally, in New York that base is rallying with great joy around an anti-Semitic Muslim, Zohran Mamdani, who hates the police and wishes to impose communism on that city. And the base showed its envy of the success of others at a big Mandani rally this past weekend, chanting without prompting over and over again that Mandani and New York’s Democratic Party governor Kathy Hochul should “Tax the rich!”

It was very clear that they weren’t chanting this to simply to re-distribute wealth, or to improve New York. No, it was very clear they wished to tax the rich because they wanted to destroy the rich. How dare such people have success when I don’t!
» Read more

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European think tank pushes passage of proposed and very Byzantine space law

10:51 am

The European Union
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”

A European think tank, the Centres for European Policy Networks (CEP), today released its analysis of a proposed space law it wants the European Union to adopt during its on-going fall session.

The Commission’s draft seeks to harmonize national regulations and establish common safety standards. According to the CEP, this is necessary to ensure a level playing field for space activities in the European single market.

This law was first released in June 2025. In reviewing it then, I concluded it would be a disaster for Europe should it be approved.

It imposes new environmental, safety, and cybersecurity regulations on the design of satellites and spacecraft in a manner that will likely slow development and competition in Europe significantly. And it applies these regulations not only to European companies but to the rest of the world’s space industry, should it do any operations at all in Europe.

CEP’s policy analysis [pdf] confirms my assessment, but thinks it is a great idea, especially its provisions that impose its rules on other countries.

In this context, the EU Space Act aims to extend the EU’s jurisdiction to space service providers based outside the EU who offer space-based data or services within the Union. This approach would ensure that no space operator is given an advantage by being exempt from the rules and prevents the circumvention of EU regulations. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the EU must rule everyone! What will instead happen if this law is passed is that American companies will simply refuse to do business with Europe. I can guarantee that SpaceX will pull its Starlink business from Europe if the EU tries to impose these regulations on it.

Europe meanwhile will find its own space industry hobbled trying to meet the law’s many odious regulations.

That the EU is still considering this law is remarkable in itself. The law was first proposed in 2024, but the vote on it was delayed a year when a number of EU members opposed it vehemently. Those nations all want their own nascent home-grown space industries to prosper, and see this law as bad policy that will kill them.

Whether that opposition can stand up to the globalist desires of the EU and Europe’s bureaucratic culture however remains very uncertain.

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SpaceX settles Cards Against Humanity lawsuit against it

9:26 am

Though no monetary numbers have been released, its appears Cards Against Humanity (CAH) has settled its $15 million lawsuit with SpaceX, instigated when the company illegally stored equipment on a piece of land CAH had purchased in 2017 in an effort to block Trump’s border wall.

Per AP, according to Texas court records, a settlement was finalized last month, prior to the upcoming Nov. 3 jury trial marked on the calendar. SpaceX owns other land plots in the Brownsville, Texas area in Cameron County, but apparently had no right to use this patch.

“The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we’re able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls,” CAH wrote in a recent message to customers. “Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing.”

Based on a somewhat childish and obscene statement from CAH describing the settlement, it got little additional money from SpaceX. The company admitted its trespass, agreed to pay for the restoration, but agreed to nothing else. In response, CAH says it will issue a free new set of cards “all about Musk” to those who donated to buy the land. The tone of CAH suggests the cards will be equally childish and obscene.

As for the border wall, if the Trump administration decides it wants to build it across this piece of land, CAH’s ownership won’t make any difference. The Trump administration will simply initiate eminent domain proceedings to take the land.

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The Philippines and Malaysia sign Artemis Accords

8:55 am

As part of a number of diplomatic agreements signed during President Trump’s visit to Malaysia this week, the State Department announced that both the Philippines and Malaysia have also added their names to Artemis Accords, bringing the number of nations in the American space alliance now to 59.

The full list of nations who have signed the accords: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The State Department tweet announcing this agreement says it the nations “are committed to principles of safe and transparent space exploration,” a relatively meaningless statement. It remains unknown whether Trump will use this alliance to get around the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property in space, as the original goal of the accords appeared to be during Trump’s first administration. So far it appears Trump is largely uninterested in this subject in his second term.

If this is so, then it is possible this alliance in future years would actually act to limit freedom in space. Despite its founding under the concept of constitutional limited rule, the culture of the American government has been quite hostile to this concept in recent decades. We cannot be confident it will support freedom and limited government in the future, on Earth or in space. And because future colonists will have less leverage on Earth, expect that government to be more abusive to those distant space-farers.

It is up to Trump to fix this. He has the opportunity to set precedents that could shape the future in space significantly. It remains very unclear whether he realizes this.

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Two lawsuits filed against NASA at its Marshall Space Flight Center

9:27 am

Two lawsuits against NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center were announced yesterday, one by several employees citing discrimination and the second by the government union representing Marshall employees protesting the Trump executive order that strips it of its collective bargaining rights.

The timing of both announcements strongly suggests the lawsuits are a coordinated effort. The discrimination suit protests the demand of the Trump administration that government employees come back to the office to work. The suit says the agency has not made reasonable accommodation for the suing employees to work at home. It also appears that the lead employee in the suit has made it a habit of doing so, having already won $30K in a settlement of a 2024 lawsuit.

The second suit is of course more significant, as it challenges the president’s power.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to invalidate Executive Order 14343, issued by President Trump on Aug. 28. The order excludes NASA and five other agencies from coverage under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), effectively terminating their union representation rights on the grounds of “national security”.

According to the complaint, the Trump Administration justified the exclusion by claiming these agencies have a primary function of national security work and that collective bargaining is inconsistent with those requirements. A White House Fact Sheet accompanying the order stated that collective bargaining “can delay the implementation of time-sensitive national security measures”.

IFPTE vehemently disputes this characterization. The union argues that NASA’s primary mission is “not national security,” but rather scientific exploration for the “benefit of all humanity”. The complaint cites the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which states that “activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humankind”.

The existence of all these government unions comes originally from an executive order by President John Kennedy. It seems Trump should have the right to cancel that order. The lawsuit also argues no, that Trump is acting beyond his legal authority.

Isn’t it interesting how presidents who are Democrats always have the power to issue executive orders n matter how outrageous (such as was done frequently by Obama and Biden), but Republican presidents like Trump do not.

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Hungary becomes the 57th nation to sign the Artemis Accords

8:01 am

NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, announced yesterday in a tweet that Hungary has now signed the Artemis Accords.

There was no NASA press release because of the government shutdown.

Hungary is now the 57th nation to sign the accords. The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The addition of Hungary means that almost the entire European portion of the former Soviet bloc has now joined the alliance. I suspect the desire of these nations to ally with the U.S. and the west is a reflection of their fear of Russia, which has not been kind to its neighbors, both during the Cold War as well as recently.

It still remains to be seen if this alliance will be used by the American government to encourage property rights in space, something that the Outer Space Treaty presently outlaws. That appeared to be its original goal when the accords were created during the first Trump administration. That goal however was abandoned during the Biden administration, making the accords alliance more of a globalist collective in support of the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions.

So far during Trump’s second administration no action has been taken to reassert those original goals.

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What bad news is NASA hiding about the heat shield it will use on the next Orion/SLS manned mission around the Moon?

3:59 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

Even as our uneducated media goes bonkers over another Musk kerfuffle, this time with interim NASA administration Sean Duffy, it is ignoring what now appears to be a strong effort by NASA to cover up some serious issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield, issues that might be far more serious than outlined in a May 2024 inspector general (IG) report.

That IG report [pdf] found the following:

Specifically, portions of the char layer wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed (see Figure 3 [shown to the right]). The unexpected behavior of the Avcoat creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions. Moreover, while there was no evidence of impact with the Crew Module, the quantity and size of the debris could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion’s parachutes to fail. Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew.

In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of
future crewed missions. [emphasis mine]

NASA spent the next few months reviewing the situation, and decided in December 2024 that it did not have the time or funding to redesign and replace the heat shield before the next flight. Instead, it chose to fly the next manned Orion mission — dubbed Artemis-2 and scheduled for the spring of 2026 carrying four astronauts around the Moon — using this same heat shield design but change the flight path during reentry to reduce stress on the shield.

NASA also admitted then that this heat shield design is defective, and that it will replace it beginning with the next mission, Artemis-3, the one that the agency hopes will land people back on the Moon.

The decision to fly humans in a capsule with such a known untrustworthy heat shield design is bad enough. Any rational person would not do this (as the inspector general above concluded). Yet NASA is going ahead, because it has determined that meeting its schedule, getting Americans back to the lunar surface ahead of China and during Trump’s present term of office, is more important than rational engineering and testing.

What now makes this decision even more worrisome is that it appears NASA is covering up the findings of its own engineers, completed in August 2024 but not made public until now.
» Read more

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The “No Kings” demonstrations this past weekend showed the future belongs to the right

11:25 am

Contrasting the protesters from the left and the right
Click here and here for sources.

This past weekend hundreds of thousands of leftist protesters gathered in numerous cities nationwide to protest Donald Trump under the strange banner of “No Kings” that somehow portrayed Trump as a new king attempting to subvert democracy. Numerous commenters on the webpage have documented the protest’s emptiness, noting that it offered no real policy options except a desire to have Donald Trump removed from office (violently in many cases), even though he was properly elected by law.

Many others, including an NBC anchor, also could not help noticing the aged nature of the protesters.

So from what we can see from our viewpoint here in the studio and talking to our crew on the ground and some people I know who are there, this is an older crowd. There’s not a lot of folks, and granted, it’s a big crowd here, I’m not good at estimating, but it’s definitely over 2000, maybe close to 3000. We can’t see everyone, but it’s an older crowd, a lot of white hair you see out there, Q-tips, as we used to call them in the business. They are out protesting, and not a lot of young people.

None of this is a surprise. The strongest base of the Democratic Party is the 1960s baby boom crowd that protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s, celebrated sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and has never found a Democrat they did not love blindly. For the past decade this aging Baby Boom generation has been repeatedly told to hate Trump, and this past weekend’s demonstration allowed these old hippies the chance to show off how well they have been indoctrinated by the left.

What was far more striking about this event to me however was the contrast between the old, white-haired “No Kings” protesters and the very youthful attendees at every single conservative demonstration or event. » Read more

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ESA awards contract to Italian company to provide an ocean landing platform

10:19 am

Avio's proposed reusable upper stage
Click for original.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded the Italian company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS) a contract to build an ocean vessel for recovering the planned reusable test upper stage being built by the Italian rocket company Avio, as shown in the graphic to the right.

In late September, ESA awarded a €40 million contract to Avio for the design of a reusable rocket upper stage. The project scope encompasses preliminary design work, including system requirements and technological solutions, for both the launch system and the ground segment. According to the agency, the project has a number of potential applications, including as an evolution of Avio’s Vega family of rockets.

On 15 October, IDS announced that it had been awarded the contract to design the project’s recovery vessel, which falls under the systems ground segment. The company has subcontracted Italian naval systems consultancy Cetena and Norwegian shipbuilder Vard to assist with the project.

ESA very clearly is trying to encourage the development of reusable rockets by Europe’s private sector, but the nature of this particular program seems badly thought out. Rather than have Avio design the system in its entirety, in order to make it as efficient and profitable as possible, it appears ESA is micromanaging the design process, and thus bringing other subcontractors in who are outside Avio’s control. As a result, the final demo might work, but it is not likely it will be competitive with the private reusable rockets being built in the U.S. and elsewhere. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

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South African red tape will likely delay Starlink there for years to come

10:06 am

According to an article in South Africa yesterday, regulatory red tape and political demands in South Africa will likely block approval of Starlink in that country for years to come, if not forever.

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi gazetted a draft policy direction on the role of EEIPs [Equity Equivalent Investment Programme] in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector on 23 May 2025. He explained that rules requiring electronic communications service providers to have 30% historically disadvantaged ownership prevented some companies from contributing to the country’s transformation in ways other than traditional ownership.

The Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act and the ICT Sector Code supported the use of EEIPs to allow qualifying multinationals to meet empowerment obligations through alternatives. These can include investing in local suppliers, enterprise and skills development, job creation, infrastructure support, research and innovation, digital inclusion initiatives, and funding for small businesses.

However, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) ownership regulations do not provide for EEIPs.

In other words, the laws contradict each other, and to make it possible to issue any licenses for a foreign company like SpaceX, the government needs to resolve this conflict. That is expected to take years of political maneuvering.

Even if this issue is resolved, SpaceX has already said it would not agree to the racial quota system proposed. It has offered to instead provide Starlink for free to 5,000 schools. It is not clear if politicians in South Africa will consider that sufficient.

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Michael Knowles – Celebrating Columbus

11:01 am

A mid-day pause: I posted twice in the past, but think it should be seen again. As I wrote in 2021,

On this day when all should be celebrating Christopher Columbus and his willingness “sail beyond the sunset,” to use a phrase from Tennyson, this short video give us an accurate picture of the man, his times, and his achievements. It also puts the lie to the bigoted, hateful, leftist slanders that have been used in recent years to poison his legacy.

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